Wasatch Weather Weenies

Source: http://www.lisamcleodblog.com/ It is easy for a meteorologist to suffer from what some people describe as mesomyopia, a tendency to focus on weather phenomenon on scales of perhaps 200 km or less.  This is especially true in the western United States where topography plays such a dominant role in the weather.  However, to be a successful forecaster, you need to look at the big picture and always examine the atmosphere from the large-scale on down to the microscale. Case in point is a comparison of two troughs, one that is influencing our weather this weekend, the other that will influence our weather in the coming days.  Both troughs dropped in from the Pacific Northwest, but will have dramatically different influences on the weather of northern Utah. The first was located off the Washington–Oregon coast at 0000 UTC Friday.  At this time, substantial moisture was found over Arizona, southern California, and the adjoining eastern Pacific Ocean due to a...

Image Source: Unknown The dewpoint during this afternoon's storm reached 63ºF and is essentially in a dead heat with a similar spike on 5 July for the highest dewpoint in Salt Lake over the past month and probably in the past year (it's the weekend, so I don't feel like digging back that far!). The precipitable water is also way up there, near 3.5 cm/1.4in. Throw open the windows and enjoy the cool, moist air from this marvelous monsoon surge.

Looks like a minimum overnight temperature at the Salt Lake City Airport (KSLC) of 78ºF, topping even the previous two nights for warmth. In case you are wondering, the highest daily minimum observed at KSLC is 80ºF.   Showers and thunderstorms should be scattered about today.  Maybe we'll get a burst of relief.

This afternoon the temperature at our campus observing site on the William Browning Building (WBB) reach 100ºF for the first time this year.  Technically, it was 99.9ºF, but we'll round up. Temperatures on the WBB over the past 30 days Other sites on campus have hit 100 previously.  One is our observing site at our mountain meteorology lab at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon, which reached 100 yesterday and Tuesday.   Another is the Natural History Museum, which also has reached 100 the past three days (it has actually exceed 100 the past two days, but I've cut the scale at 100 for entertainment purposes). Such variability in temperature is not uncommon and can arise from a variety of factors including differences in instrumentation, siting characteristics, or local surface conditions.  Further, the WBB and Natural History Museum sites are on buildings with substantially different characteristics. WBB UMNH Note the difference in both the dar...

Following up on the previous post about hot summer nights, if you really want to feel uncomfortable, Furnace Creek in Death Valley only dropped to 107ºF this morning, the second highest minimum temperature at that location since record keeping began in 1911. Must have been good camping...

On Wednesday we set a record for the highest minimum temperature observed on 11 July at the Salt Lake International Airport.  The mercury only dipped to 77ºF, the highest minimum temperature observed thusfar this year. Source: NWS The 103ºF we hit yesterday afternoon tied the record for the date, giving us the highest daily mean temperature thusfar this year as well. I haven't seen the official minimum for last night yet, but it appears based on 5-minute observations that it was 75ºF or higher. Thus, I declare these the Dog Days of Summer .  At issue is whether or not the monsoon surge that should push into Utah tomorrow will give us some relief. It should be another hot one today with a slight chance of a thunderstorm, followed by another warm night tonight, but showers and thunderstorms should be more widespread tomorrow, as well as Saturday.  I'm hoping for a Shawshank Redemption moment at some point the next couple of days.

University of Utah alum Jack Hales has a great blog examining the weather of the Star Valley of Wyoming .  Jack recently retired from a remarkable 46-year career in the National Weather Service that included more than 25 years as a lead forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center (formerly the National Severe Storms Forecast Center) in Norman, OK.  If you are at the SPC, you are a member of the "dream team" of weather forecasting. Jack's post today examines the Teton Tornado, a rare high-altitude F4 tornado that moved through northwest Wyoming 25 years ago this month on July 21, 1987.  An F4 tornado produces devastating damage and has estimated winds of 207–260 mph. Blown down trees from the Teton Tornado.  Source: Fujita (1989), photo by Brian Smith.  The tornado was even investigated by Ted Fujita, developer of the  Fujuta scale of tornado intensity . Click here to have a look at Jack's post.